To meet with the growing demand for Internet service, the Internet engineering task force (IETF) has introduced a standard for a next version of Internet Protocol (IP), generally referred to as Internet Protocol version 6, or simply “IPv6”. Most of today's Internet uses IP version 4 (IPv4). The most important deficiencies in IPv4 identified by the IETF have been addressed, and are corrected in IPv6. Chief among these is the shortage of addresses. The number of IP addresses supported by IPv4 is expressible in 32 bits (i.e. 232=4,294,967,296). This number of addresses is not enough to support world-wide demand for Internet addresses.
IPv6 is expected to co-operate with IPv4 initially. It is also expected that eventually IPv4 will be phased out altogether, leaving only the IPv6. Accordingly, many details regarding co-operation of IPv4 and IPv6 have to be resolved. One important aspect of IP networks is related to routing policies. As is illustrated in FIG. 1, a typical Internet 8 includes a plurality of interconnected autonomous systems 10 (ASs) (only 4 illustrated) that respectively include routers, servers and the like, as well as a management interface 12. Each router in AS 10 is provisioned with a routing policy, that specifies handling properties for routes, etc. A network access point 14 (NAP) interconnects the ASs 10 and provides the management interfaces 12 with a single, co-operatively maintained, Internet routing registry database 16, well known in the art. The route registry database 16 provides for the exchange of policy information that makes inter-AS routing substantially less prone to error. Currently the language used to express routing policies is an object-oriented language called Routing Policy Specification Language (RPSL). RPSL is currently adapted to support only unicast IPv4 routing policies and cannot be used to specify routing policies for both IPv4 and IPv6, or for multicast traffic routing carried over either IPv4 or IPv6. As the demand for IPv6 increases, and more IPv6 ASs are deployed, the requirement for IPv6 routing policies increases proportionally. While it is possible to provide new, additional route registries and a new route specification language for IPv6, the inefficiencies of such a solution are not economical.
Consequently, there is a need for a method for extending RPSL to handle current needs facing AS management in relation to concurrent support of routing policies for both IPv4 and IPv6, as well as for multicast in either protocol, as described in part in an Internet-Draft that is a working document of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), entitled “IPv6 Routing Policies using RPSL—draft-parent-rpsl-ipv6-00.txt” published by co-applicant Florent Parent on Oct. 17, 2001.